Sydney Long was born on 20 August 1871 in Goulburn, Colony of New South Wales (now Australia) and studied at the school of the Art Society of New South Wales in Sydney. His early paintings were influenced by Art Nouveau and Symbolism, though he later became known for landscape etchings and aquatints. Long immigrated to London, England in 1910 to further his studies, took up etching at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1918, settled again in Sydney in 1925 and returned to London in 1952. He was a foundation member and, for a time, secretary of the Society of Graphic Art. .Sydney Long died in London, England. inn 1955.
Painter and printmaker Sydney Long was born on 20 August 1871 in Goulburn, British Colony of New South Wales (now Australia) to James Long, an Irish-born commission agent, and Susan Long, née Fletcher (Mendelssohn, 1986). He moved to Sydney around 1888 and studied at the school of the Art Society of New South Wales under A. J. Daplyn and Julian Ashton (Ibid.). In 1894, his painting By Tranquil Waters, shown at the society’s annual exhibition, was purchased by the National Art Gallery of New South Wales. He became president of the Society of Artists, Sydney, in 1898. Seeking further study abroad, he immigrated to London, England in October 1910 (Mendelssohn, 1986).
Long’s paintings of the 1890s and 1900s set figures from classical mythology within the Australian bush in a decorative manner associated with Art Nouveau and Symbolism. His mature style drew more on the English Aesthetic movement than on continental Art Nouveau (Ibid.). The Spirit of the Plains (1897), in which a female figure leads brolgas across a moonlit plain, reflects the influence of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. The work was shown at the Exhibition of Australian Art in London at the Grafton Galleries in 1898, the year in which The Studio praised Long’s ‘imaginative design’. His later landscapes of broad skies have been described as a form of antipodean Impressionism, and the painter Frank Brangwyn was an important influence on his English period (Aikman, 1981).
Long first enrolled at an art school in Kennington and, in 1912, travelled in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. He took a studio in Westminster Bridge Road (Urquhart, 1930) and exhibited intermittently at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1913 to 1928. The First World War disrupted shipments of and payments for his work, leaving him often impoverished (Mendelssohn, 1986). In England, his subjects widened to include the Thames, Sussex Downs, London streets and Flemish towns (Urquhart, 1930), though, in 1925, he remarked that ‘it’s absurd to say that an artist ceases to be an Australian after any period’ (Moore, 1925).
In 1918, after a colleague in Cornwall suggested that the linear quality of his work suited etching, he began part-time study of printmaking at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, Holborn, under renowned Jewish artist, Frank Emanuel and later Malcolm Osborne and William P. Robins, subsequently translating many of his Australian compositions into etchings and aquatints (National Gallery of Australia, 2012). Six etchings, among them The Thames from Waterloo Bridge, On the Wandle and Pastoral, secured his election as an associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1920, and he was a foundation member and, for a time, secretary of the Society of Graphic Art (Urquhart, 1930).
In 1921, he returned to Australia for 18 months and helped found the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society, before returning to London, where, on 1 December 1924, he married the dancer Catherine Brennan in Lambeth (Mendelssohn, 1986). That year, a view of Sydney Harbour was shown at the Royal Academy, which prompted an illustrated article in La Revue Moderne, and he was appointed New South Wales representative of the Dominions’ Art Club at Australia House (Moore, 1925). In the same year, 11 of his prints entered the British Museum collection. In 1925, Long and his wife settled at Lane Cove, Sydney, and he held his first solo exhibition of etchings at the Australian Fine Art Gallery, Sydney (Galway, 1925). A solo exhibition followed at the Dunster Galleries, Adelaide, in 1927. In 1931, he exhibited 30 paintings at the Sedon Galleries, Melbourne. He later became president of the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society, won the Wynne Prize in 1938 and 1940, and served as a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1933 to 1949.
In 1952, towards the end of his life, feeling lonely and believing that most of his generation had died, Long returned with his wife to London (Aikman, 1981). The National Art Gallery of New South Wales held a loan exhibition in 1941. Sydney Long died in London, England on 23 January 1955. His works are held in UK public collections, including the Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and in many public collections in Australia. The National Art Gallery of New South Wales held a memorial exhibition in 1955 and Long's work was later included in Stories of Australian Art at the Commonwealth Institute, London, in 1988. It was also shown at the Royal Academy in 1900: Art at the Crossroads in 2000; Australia in 2013; and was the subject of the retrospective Sydney Long: The Spirit of the Land presented at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, in 2012.
Michal Mel
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Sydney Long]
Publications related to [Sydney Long] in the Ben Uri Library